


What Must Be

by codenamecynic



Series: It came from the tumblr-verse [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heartbreak, Loss, Mutually Unrequited, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 02:56:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3233675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenamecynic/pseuds/codenamecynic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke, Fenris, and a moment of truth before the Gallows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Must Be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tarysande](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarysande/gifts).



> So continues the trend of my super sad tumblr fics. Written for the prompt 'Mamihlapinatapei - The look between two people in which each loves the other but is too afraid to make the first move' by the one and only tarysande.

The city weeps.  Black water trickles off the beams of gaping roofs, dripping like ichor off the eaves, ash oozing through the cobble of the streets like mud rising up between stones on a mountain path, in danger of being sucked under.

It never rains in Kirkwall.  The masts of ships in the dockyard sway uneasily, furled sails shivering like skin pricked with an unseasonable cold.  Yardarms creak, aging limbs suffering under the weight of the ominous dark that rolls in from all sides as the sun burns on the edge of a storm, spilling bloody red into the water. 

Hawke stands alone, cloaked in black silhouette against the waning light. 

She does not know how it has come to this.

Oh she  _knows_ , of course.  Knows in the same way a child might recite a familiar history, quoting words she remembers but does not understand.  The way that prudent hands sense that fire burns without thrusting fingers into coals.

Knowing does not ease the icy curl of weary sadness around her heart, nor make the point of the sword beneath her chin any less sharp.  It’s warm where it nicks her skin, blood welling in the hollow of her throat where armor does not protect.  She’s let him in too close, held him too dear – and yet, not dearly enough.  Never enough.  She cannot cross the space between them, cannot overcome the blade held in hands far more unsteady than they should be, trembling on the edge of the universe between  _what_   _is_  and  _what_   _must be._

“I don’t have a choice, Fenris.” The words ring with an inevitability that weighs like an anchor around her neck, reverberating like a tolling of the Chantry bell that makes the very earth quake.

There isn’t a Chantry anymore, though – just a ruin of stone, rubble and wet ash.

“There is always a choice,” he says in return, as though he has to.  Irony, that. 

The words roll off her like the white crest of frothing sea at the bottom of the black cliffs.  On the surface it changes nothing, water dripping off stone in a hurried attempt to regroup, but he knows – he could continue, could try again and again and again until he wears her down, until she breaks apart and is pulled under.  She’s barely in one piece as it is, a ship riding the crown of a storm surge, held together by spit and dreams and the prayers of sailors who read cold death in the movement of the waves beneath them.

Is that what this is, then – the surrender to an undertow, the current too much to fight for a body exhausted?

“I wish that was true.”  She doesn’t mean to say those last words; they spill out of her like the dregs of wine dripping from an overturned cup, and for the first time in her life she wonders if this is the moment where she lets herself die.  Not because she wants to - not that, of course not - but does she trust herself, she wonders, to strike a killing blow?

“Do you?”  His voice is all gravel and steel, colder than the frost that forms unsummoned in the fingers that wrap the staff in her hand.

But his eyes are not as icy as his voice no matter how hard he tries, crinkling at the edges as though narrowed against some unseen pain.  He bleeds, they all do, and yet she knows him so much better than that, has seen him crawl over the bodies of the fallen to grasp for life, to curl his hand around a beating heart and  _pull_ , holding the ragged edges of himself together.  If he fails to strike her down where she stands, it will not be because he is hurting.

And yet, she is so often wrong.  Her life is a comedy of errors, one of Varric’s tragedies, enough foolish laughter sprinkled in to keep the tears at bay.

Varric never has been much good at writing tragedies.

Hawke and her bleeding heart, too stubborn to know when to stop it breaking.  She’s a myriad of scars, little pieces held together by spit and dreams and the memories of a pretty young girl on a farm in Ferelden who ceased to be in an instant.  She’s a creature of fate, careening down the edge of destiny like a whetstone along the edge of a knife.  Always running into danger, always trying to hold back disaster with her body as though she can rebuild a mountain out of stones patiently stacked.  And  _yet –_

And yet.  This will not end well.  It can’t.  She could feel the tides turning the moment she threw away her knife, the moment she shook a black feathered bird free of the cage it made for itself and forced it to fly.  She heard it in the rasp of weapons unsheathed, in the creak of a bowstring drawn, in breaths held and dark oaths made, the retreat of boots on the cobblestones and the crackle of flames in the distance, burning ever higher.

The cold grows, shivering its way up her arm.  Enough time and it will crawl up her chest and consume her whole.

She should have told him, a million years ago.  Should have done more than to answer the questioning glances and the hesitant presence at her side with stoic silence, to make excuses and conditions and pointless delays.  The two of them, they are too much the same and pride is a hard thing to swallow.  A bitter pill.

She should have been reckless. Should have been brave.

 _Do it_ , she thinks.  “Is this what you want?”  She’s brave  _now,_ reckless _now_ , and she feels Varric stiffen beside her, Bianca in his hands.  This isn’t the end to the tale that he wanted – he would have written it another way, something more heroic, more daring and flashy with a grand speech or maybe just a grand gesture, but she’s all out of cards to play.  She’s never been good with words, and walking the middle path only ever seems to give both sides an excuse to crumble.

“No,” Fenris says, and draws back his sword.  Her throat burns where the tip had rested, foxfire under her skin.

She wonders what he sees when he looks at her, wonders if he sees the woman behind the magic, or if her face is just another pale, wan specter of Danarius to haunt him still.  There are monsters that hide in her shadow, guilt that snarls like hungry dogs in her ears, howling a requiem for the blood of so many on her hands.  Perhaps it would have been different if she had been more like sweet Bethany, dead these long years, or maybe even more like Carver – confused and wavering in conviction, but at least lucky enough to have chosen a convenient side.

Or maybe if she’d been more honest with herself, more forgiving, more indulgent-

“No,” he says again, and he looks as lost as she feels, as though he can hear the voices that squirm inside her head, the accusations that they make.  Regret never chokes them out, only makes them louder. “I will not stop you, Hawke.  But I can’t come with you.”

It’s fair, and it’s all she can expect.  Bitter seeds grow bitter fruit.  She shouldn’t want to weep, shouldn’t want to beg him to reconsider, to make amends, to say all of the words that she’s never said.

After all, he’s never said them either, no matter how many truths he’s spilled on the breath of wine into the darkness, no matter how many times his hands have reached only to pull away.

“I understand.”

And she does.  It isn’t meant to be.  Water rolls against the dock, lapping at pylons with a thousand greedy tongues as though to wear even those stalwart things away and erase all trace of the city that once was.  What could have been rapidly fades, borne away like ash on the wind until all that is left are the bare bones of her grim purpose.  She can’t afford to linger here even a moment longer, no matter how she feels, how she hurts, how she might wish-

But she doesn’t have the luxury of wishes either.  The ferry waits and the city burns, and maybe she’ll die anyway, one way or the other, and surely there are no words in any tongue for the futility of her own laments.

“Be safe, Fenris.”

“And you.”

She lets him go, and does not allow herself to look back.

**Author's Note:**

> The scenes before the final fight(s) in the Gallows are so pivotal, I can't help but revisit them over and over again.


End file.
